January 6, 2009

The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry. My plans haven’t completely gone awry, but days after posting about my plans for 2009, a possible delay has come up. Not all delays are bad ones, and this one in particular is quite good. I am moving my studio. The new space will be larger and a better fit for a studio – but moves take time. Already, the effort of preparing the new space has left me no time to work on the site upgrades I was implenting for my year of free releases. I will still aim to start releasing material in February but that deadline will be tougher to meet than I had anticipated. Well, stay tuned.

December 30, 2008

In July of 2006, I released my first album, Meeting of Minds. In April of 2007, I released a free EP, Rough Drafts. In August of 2007, I released my second full length album, Reverse Psychology. I think 2 1/2 albums in 2 years is pretty good, but then you didn’t hear much about music from me in 2008.

Well, 2008 is just about over probably over by the time you’re reading this, and I’ve decided to change up the way I’m doing things for 2009. Previously, my process has been to create rough versions of songs, figure out which ones are being used on the next album, then finish those songs. In 2009, I will be working on completing 1 song at a time. Every song I do complete will be available for free download online. There will definitely be some sort of podcast available, but I haven’t decided if it will be a part of this blog, my main site, or if the songs and related info will be posted in a new, seperate blog.

Two songs are already just about complete and several others are close to completion. Before I start publishing these songs, I need to complete some site renovations and deal with moving my studio, so you likely won’t see anything until February at the earliest. Once I get started, my intention is to publish songs frequently – at least every few weeks – though I’m not planning to aim for the insane 1 song/week that I’ve heard of some people striving for.

For those of you who know my music (or those of you who don’t), if you have any ideas for a site name to go along with this concept, please leave a comment or send me a message.

December 22, 2008

Back in January I returned to Capoeira after many years off. Looking back, I wasn’t in great shape at the time. I think my metabolism is finally starting to slow down and I had not been exercising much. I wasn’t completely out of shape, but it was enough to make Capoeira difficult. When trying to practice different moves, I was constantly feeling like I didn’t have enough stamina, I wasn’t strong enough, or I wasn’t flexible enough.

Now, almost 1 year later, I’m seeing a drastic difference. There is still much I need to do to increase my stamina, strength and flexibility, but they are vastly improved from January and I am regularly growing in all those areas. Since January I’ve been going to classes at least three times a week and pushing myself when I am there. I am proud of the progress I’ve made so far, but I haven’t done anything extraordinary. The cliche remains true – practice makes perfect.

But, if it’s a cliche, why do so many people seem not to know it? I’ve lost count of the amount of people who have said things like “I’d love to do Capoeira, but I could never move the way you do.” I guess I could take that as a compliment – people assume that I’m somehow so good that I woke up one day knowing the amount of Capoeira I do – but I find it frustrating.

There is so much a person can achieve with time, motivation, focus, and the right teacher. It is silly to look at someone’s achievements and assume they came without at least some of these things. While your mother’s assurance that “you can do anything you set your mind to” is not 100% true, it does still hold some weight. There is a countless number of things you can become good at if you put in the work. It is one thing to decide you can’t do some of these things because you can’t or won’t make the time to learn, but if you decide that they are simply impossible for you, you are selling yourself short.

One of the guys in my class is better than all the rest of us at the acrobatic moves that require strength and flexibility. Some of the things he can do are truly amazing to watch. The other day, he told me that when he started, he couldn’t even do a carttwheel – one of the most basic movements of Capoeira. When he found out that our Mestre was going to be visiting his class, he spent hours a day practicing cartwheels, and learned to do them just in time to not embarress himself in front of our Mestre.

December 15, 2008

I just finished moving this blog from blogger.com to WordPress. If you notice any issues, please let me know.

Some changes to note:

The address of the blog is now www.ahdchild.com/blog. If you use any of the previous addresses, they will redirect to the new one, but you should update your bookmarks just to be safe.

If you subscribe to the feed, you should be using http://feedproxy.google.com/ahdchild. Any of the previous addresses should redirect to this one, but once again, you should update feed settings to be safe.